THE MAKING OF A POSTCOLONIAL HINDU IDENTITY IN THE SHARAVANA BABA MOVEMENT THE SOAS JOURNAL OF POSTGRADUATE RESEARCH Author: Dhruv Ramnath Department/Centre: Department of Anthropology and Sociology Publication: The SOAS Journal of Postgraduate Research, Volume 11 (2017-18), Pages 85-99 Decolonisation in Praxis ISSN: 2517-6226 Stable URL: http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/26313/ Key words: Transnationalism – new guru movements – Hinduism – globalisation – South Asia Licence: Published under the Creative Commons Attribution Non- Commercial (CC-BY-NC) 4.0 International Licence D. Ramnath / The SOAS Journal of Postgraduate Research, Volume 11 (2017-18), Pages 85-99 THE MAKING OF A POSTCOLONIAL HINDU IDENTITY IN THE SHARAVANA BABA MOVEMENT Dhruv Ramnath [email protected] Department of Anthropology and Sociology ABSTRACT This paper examines the ways in which Hindu identity is constructed and maintained in the Sharavana Baba movement. As the Baba’s new religious movement is still in the process of being institutionalised, there is much to be broached on the topic of the Indian New Age as it consolidates itself with varying devotional groups dotting India’s vast spiritual terrain. Since this guru movement is gaining ground on the world stage, the paper draws from existing academic perspectives on gurudom and maps the beginning stages of sacred new ethics and sites, whilst charting out the ocular translations of this charismatic leader to depict the differences and similarities of his movement set against more popular ones. It fills part of the lacunae in the literature on guru-faith in the modern world by invoking the anthropology of insight, offering an optic through which this particular guru-faith can be understood within Hindu worlds of worship. 85 Article / The making of a postcolonial Hindu identity This paper explores decolonisation in praxis through a relatively unknown guru movement that is attracting a vast transnational following.1 It examines certain questions without providing textbook answers because it is the first academic paper on this movement. Where is the guru Sharavana Baba positioned in being a Hindu guru amidst varying religious communities in the world? Does he negate his Hindu identity, such as the hugging guru Amma (Lucia, 2011), or does he avowedly recreate his Hindu identity to suit the demands of his Sri Lankan Tamil Hindu following? What are the politics of being a transnational guru seeking larger provinces? The paper attempts to analyse the Sharavana Baba movement to posit that it is a movement based on Murugan culture from where myriad magical tropes can be imagined. Unlike organised ‘world’ religions, such as Islam and Christianity, that do not accept other religious equals2, Hindu spirituality in the Sharavana Baba movement summons us to rethink preconceived notions of spirituality within the anthropology of religion. Sociologies of gender, class and religion implore us to question Hinduism and India’s ways as their gurus emerge triumphant spectators of the methods of the academic establishment. Whilst they simply do not bother about what we write about them, it is clear that they will nevertheless expand and dominate3 spiritual India. Scholarly attempts at absorbing the complexities of new-age guru movements are linked inextricably to careful observations on 1 Anthropologists such as myself use the word 'decolonisation' hesitatingly because to broach the topic in social anthropology would mean to speak in the personal pronoun and as the insider. This is problematic because it relegates decolonisation to atavistic readings of history and religion. I spot decolonisation on an inquiry that is essentially broad and that draws on cross-disciplinary, critical postcolonial interpretations that move beyond strict disciplinary boundaries. The move is not without pitfalls because a true decolonisation cannot exist without problematising the colonised zone. In other words, both the colonised and the coloniser carry histories of contention. The colonised had their own inherent problems before colonisation and this requires an appropriate account of the intersections between modernity and tradition as well as identity and religion in the postcolonial era. My reading of this movement is planted in this zone of meaning-making where gurus are figured as beings who attend to the masses who are swayed by their charisma and propaganda, the shifts and changes in their media. Due to space constraints, I cannot chart out the history of gurus and offer a weightier analysis of a gargantuan phenomenon. However, the decolonisation theme runs throughout this paper for it absorbs research methodologies currently animating academic discourse, which negotiates uncertainties like the generalisations and assumptions we have of our subjects whilst they are being probed. I, therefore, understand my subject through this pemmicanized view 'from below'. 2 This is similar to the claim made by historian Romila Thapar that 'A fundamental sanity of Indian civilization has been due to an absence of Satan' in Romila Thapar, Early India, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 18. The truism that Hinduism is a pluralistic religion accepting of other faiths unlike Judeo-Christian religions which do not do so in their 'tolerance rhetoric', is brought out in Shashi Tharoor, Why I am a Hindu, (New Delhi: Aleph Book Company, 2018), 310. 3 My concern is neither to situate Sharavana Baba as a 'genuine' or 'fraudulent' guru nor to assume that all gurus are the same. Similar to the claims of many scholars who examine gurus in a monolithic whole due to the volume of guru movements warranting documentation, the construction of a guru as a charismatic leader capable of appealing to large sections of the electorate bears a mark on the social landscape of religion in the modern world where both the fraud and his counterpart feature as actors reflecting particular frameworks of the zeitgeist. On the other hand, as T. Srinivas writes, '[T]he McDonalds Corporation.. moved to India, but the Sathya Sai movement was an example of an Indian religiocultural movement that had people from different regions of the world gravitating towards it." Tulasi Srinivas, Winged Faith, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 3. Sharavana Baba's movement is similar to Sathya Sai Baba's movement insomuch that it reimagines religion for devotees to contribute to the publicity of the Baba as he travels around the globe. 86 D. Ramnath / The SOAS Journal of Postgraduate Research, Volume 11 (2017-18), Pages 85-99 those movements that have already shifted paradigms, villages and cities, whereas the Sharavana Baba movement is still in the process of becoming as it reworks on Hinduism for a wider consumer base. I will now explain why these factors need to be weighed in. SHARAVANA BABA AND HIS MOVEMENT Sharavana Baba was born in the village of Sreekrishnapuram in Kerala on 8 October 1979. He was considered to be self-realised and a god from birth. His hagiography describes him as a reincarnation of Lord Murugan, Shiva's second son. He is believed to be a world preceptor or an avatar. His first ashram was established in Calicut and his second ashram in Palakkad in south India. Subsequently, a branch was established in Bangalore in July 2007 and later in London in 2010. Apart from spreading love, his mission consists of four main forces: 1) free food to those who need them 2) free clothing to those who do not have them 3) free books to the poor and needy and 4) free medicines for those afflicted by sickness. As his movement was borne in India, the main services at the moment are geared towards the poor and village communities around his ashram in Kerala. Yet as he travels to Britain and around the world frequently, a large number of Sri Lankan Hindu followers seek his blessings and guidance. HINDU SPIRITUALITY AND AVATARS Religion is intimately connected to believers and their belief systems. Since most seekers of self-revelation are religious, religion is a set of practices and processes that dissect the nature of creaturely life for religious audiences who are very often themselves at the receiving end of the prescriptions laid down by worldly institutions. There are complex gender, caste, class, national, regional and ethnic divides that are embedded deeply into the systems of globalised religion where divinity is cathected into the worldly for living the good life. In the Sharavana Baba movement originating in Kerala, spiritual illumination is embedded within these fractures and bridges of the religious imagination. Scholars have noted that devotees of popular new-age guru movements are primarily from the middle-classes (Warrier, 2006), with the exception of the many from the periphery who are reduced to the ideal-typical devotee waiting patiently in a queue for the guru’s darshan, or seeing, which is 'the apotheosis of the devotional experience; a sacred moment both ritually and experientially' (T. Srinivas 2009, p.317). Whilst this is certainly the case, the Sharavana Baba movement accommodates all classes in the main so that all followers may receive darshan. Added to darshan is the preponderance of catering to the 'lower-classes' as beneficiaries of charitable services. The affluent put in energies into acts of seva (selfless service) which benefit the poor who receive free food, books and clothes. The devotional base varies in identity but those in the lower order of the economic hierarchy are primary recipients of the services of the mission owing to the money that